Who: Bikas, a 12 year old aspiring guideWhere: Across the river from the Taj MahalWhat: He goes to school in the morning and by late afternoon, he sells t-shirts at the gardens across the river from the Taj Mahal, Agra. He was learning French and Spanish as language skills were essential to be a successful guide, he said. He asked us our names in English, French and Spanish; he also rattled off a few sentences in each language. It was heartening to look into Bikas's eyes and share some of his aspirations. The underbelly of India is made of these young people. He is India: young, ambitious and hopeful. Watch.

Changes are afoot at IFR: This is the last post that will come to you in full by email or in your reader, and I apologize for that. After this, you will have to click on a link to navigate to my blog to read the rest of my post. You see, I am tired of having my posts republished in full, along with my pictures, without my permission, on other web sites. Unfortunately, since I host with Blogger, I don't have much control over the nature of my RSS feeds. Also, since I host my pictures on Flickr, a photo sharing community that I enjoy, I cannot restrict my pictures from being displayed on other web sites. I've known eventually I will have to host it on one of my own servers. I probably should have done this a long time ago. I hope to publish the posts I've been holding back now that the last theft has been resolved.

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comments:

I've noticed a lot of posts from popular sites being put up on weird, unrelated websites, they crop up when you do a google search for images. I've been wondering whats up with that-- since many of these posts have been written by my friends, I can recognize them instantly. I totally understand your frustration, surely this has to be illegal?

So here's one thing I noticed---the attitude of teenage kids in India. Isn't it remarkable?